Egypt Prepares To Use Aircraft And Tanks In Sinai For First Time In 40 Years

While the geopolitical focus is once again all over Iran and Israel, it may be time to take a quick look Egypt, where the recently elected, and pro-US president Mohamed Mursi is "preparing to use aircraft and tanks in Sinai for the first time since the 1973 war with Israel in its offensive against militants in the border area." Reuters continues: "The plans to step up the operation were being finalised by Egypt's newly appointed Defence Minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as he made his first visit to Sinai on Monday following the killing of 16 border guards on August 5. Egypt blamed the attack on Islamist militants and the conflict is an early test for President Mohamed Mursi - elected in June following the overthrow last year of Hosni Mubarak - to prove he can rein in militants on the border with Israel. "Al-Sisi will supervise the putting together of final plans to strike terrorist elements using aircraft and mobile rocket launchers for the first time since the beginning of the operation," an Egyptian security source said. Another security source said the army was planning to attack and besiege al-Halal mountain in central Sinai, using weapons including tanks, where militants were suspected to be hiding." Of course, what can possibly go wrong in the middle east once a government decides to escalate military expansion against militant terrorists. Look for crude to rise ever higher, and for SPR release rumors to hit the tape daily as yet another market is ensnared in price controls ahead of the election.

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Another security source said the army was planning to attack and besiege al-Halal mountain in central Sinai, using weapons including tanks, where militants were suspected to be hiding.

Disorder has spread in North Sinai, a region with many guns that has felt neglected by the central government, since the overthrow of Mubarak in a popular uprising. Mubarak's government had worked closely with Israel to keep the region under control and Islamist President Mursi has promised to restore stability.

The 1979 peace treaty between both countries limited military presence in the desert peninsula though in recent years Israel agreed to allow Egypt to deploy more forces there to stem weapons smuggling by Palestinian gunmen and other crimes.

After the border attack this month, Egypt launched a joint army-police operation that has raided militant hideouts, arrested their members and seized weapons.

Israeli officials, who say they are in regular contact with Cairo, have encouraged Egypt to take tough action against the gunmen responsible for the assault and have previously allowed the use of helicopters in the operation.

A quick look at Egypt's brand new defense minister:

Al-Sisi was appointed defence minister last week in a surprise shake-up by Mursi, replacing Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi who served as Mubarak's defence minister for 20 years.

Sisi was sworn in as commander-in-chief of the army and defense minister on Sunday, becoming the nation's first defense minister not to hold the field marshal army rank, coming instead from the country's military intelligence unit, according to Ahram Online.

It is also likely no coincidence that Sisi formerly served as commander of the country's north, including the troublesome Sinai region, where the Egyptian military just launched military airstrikes for the first time in three decades following the recent killing of 16 Egyptian border guards.

Then, of course, there are the rumors. Two months ago, popular Egyptian talk show host Tawfiq Okasha alleged Sisi was basically working as a Muslim Brotherhood mole in the country's then-ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces, or SCAF, reported Daily News Egypt. SCAF took power in Egypt following last year's ousting of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.

Such claims were quickly denied by SCAF, according to Daily News Egypt. But the rumor could see new life with President Morsi being the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate and all. Still, who knows.

Sisi is also believed to be among the youngest, if not the youngest member of the ruling military council, and indeed is nearly two decades younger than his 75-year-old predecessor Tantawi, who lead the country's armed forces since 1991.

Tantawi and Sisi also both worked as military attachés, according to Ahram Online, Sisi having served Saudi Arabia and Tantawi in Pakistan.

Look forward to escalating news flow out of the Sinai, and, of course, to new all time highs in Brent in EUR, and soon in any currency.

"Yesterday, a group of criminals and terrorists attacked an Egyptian security checkpoint in Rafah, killing nearly twenty of our brothers, our sons, and stole one car and one truck, and tried to crash their way into Israel."

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya is Palestine's legitimately elected prime minister. He also blames Israel for Sunday's incident. It's "responsible, one way or another, for this attack to embarrass Egypt's leadership and create new problems at the border in order to ruin efforts to end" Gaza's siege.

He added that "(n)o Palestinian wants to kill anybody in Egypt. Any attack against Egypt's security is also against the security of Palestinians."

An official Hamas statement said:

"Hamas condemns this ugly crime that killed a number of Egyptian soldiers and extends its deep condolences to the families of the victims and to the leadership and the people of Egypt."

Still the Israeli's have strong links with Bedouins alot of shit getting smuggled in isn't bound for Gaza. The Bediouns make big money trafficking drugs, contraband and people into Israel. Alot of money is made. It would make no sense for the Bedouins to start a full on war with the Egyptian army and the Israeli's at the same time. The Bedouins have survived there too long to pull some stupid shit like that at a time like this. They are non ideological survivors who have no time for Islamists.

I don't think it was the Mossad though, might have been the Brotherhood or whoever was setting those gas pipelines on fire during the revolution. The Mossad by all accounts have been behaving themselves lately, too preoccupied with Iran, not sure they like whats going on with Syria either. In the end however ruthless the Mossad are they aren't stupid, they have their nation why risk everything for world war III in the Middle East.

i put up links here last week that the military leadership had been sacked and mursi had made plans to visit iran

so the "news" here is actually not 'news' except for the sinai expedition plan(s)

what it most likely "means" is that egypt [which i would imagine is still a pretty strong friend of the US] has rid itself of both mubarik and the junta which had been behind the throne and was also still pushing at the the new goobering peeps making electoral and security and transition rules and so on ever since the bread-heads and revo or (L0L) "turning"

who is mursi? i have been asking zeroHeads to take a very close look at him all along and have posted his vitae here before also b.c he has that great "zag-a-zigU" cred :> Biography for Muhammad Mursi - Silobreaker

and this is the VIPart imo :> Education: 1982 PhD in Engineering from South California University, (northRidge) USA, 1978 MSc in Engineering from Cairo University, Egypt 1975 BSc in Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt

in spite of all the focus (foci?) on the EU and the US and the ME and china and..., africa is where everything is happening politically and diplomatically right now imo

the idea that lay people such as you and i "know" what spooks are driving which agents or faction what way and why is absurd

however the MSM want people to think they understand so they highlight different stuff on different daze

but the geopolitics are NOT confusing and i have also tried to bring some sanity to the discussions here be trying to keep things simple amidst all the sabre-rattling and fire-fights since Fall/Winter 2011

that said, can you guess why slewie considers this the most important news of this day (the day after the 'Eid' action) :>

Blast on Sudan Plane Kills 31A blast aboard a plane carrying an "official delegation" to Sudan's war-torn South Kordofan state for the Muslim Eid holiday on Sunday killed all 31 on board, an aviation official said in the Suanese capital, Khartoum.

...the idea that lay people such as you and i "know" what spooks are driving which agents or faction what way and why is absurd...

and the quote of the day award goes to the pi-rat(there was some other quite choice material in there too!)

Don't think for a moment that anything going on here is what meets the eye...the hand of media duplicity is much faster than any eyeballin can keep up with...ever since G-Daff finally went down for the count we've bin bedazed by dissimulationist disinfo about what's going on in Afreaka and the ME...

Those "terrorists" in the north will be sio-controlled Hamas operatives, playing rhythmn section to Mr. Brotherhoods' operatic opus in Cairo, wherein he alternately swoons with passion for the newly old-guard military junta and rattles his cheap sword(the one he uses for the sword swallowing schtick when called upon to enterain his higherups in the NED\ICG hierarchy) at them...

It's all farce. State Department[MadDOgClinton]directs, telaviv produces, and usual, Merikan taxpayer picks up the tab....

Mohamed Morsi - hardly a "hardline extremists" himself, he is the embodiment of the absolute fraud that is the Muslim Brotherhood - a leadership ofWestern-educated,Western-servingtechnocrats posing as "pious Muslims" attempting to cultivate a base of fanatical extremists prepared to intimidate through violence the Brotherhood's opposition

slewie - can you help clarify? The link you gave says education was at South California University. There is no such University in California. But there are these. The only one at Northridge is California State University at Northridge (CSUN) Another possibility is Southern California University (renamed California Southern University in 2007). But that is a correspondence school and offers no degrees in Engineering that I can see. And USC is south and west of downtown Los Angeles, while Northridge is north and west.

A blast aboard a plane carrying an "official delegation" to Sudan's war-torn South Kordofan state for the Muslim Eid holiday on Sunday killed all 31 on board, an aviation official said in the Suanese capital, Khartoum.

i put up a map of this part of eAfrica last week-end just before this "happened" trying to tell the BiCheZ here that the carriers off iran were also off eAFRICA too for pete's sake!

the magician has TWO hands... remember...? the constant propwash abt "iran" may simply be a smokescreen

"Sisi was sworn in as commander-in-chief of the army and defense minister on Sunday, becoming the nation's first defense minister not to hold the field marshal army rank, coming instead from the country's military intelligence unit, according to Ahram Online."